Who needs a legislature?

November 20, 2007

When it comes to health-care spending, Illinois is living beyond its means. Only a third of the way into the fiscal year, Illinois has already spent half of its $6.8 billion health care budget, the state comptroller's office reports.

But Gov. Rod Blagojevich is still shoveling cash out the door. He is moving to extend state-subsidized health insurance to reach some 147,000 adults. The expansion will cost at least $225 million a year by the governor's estimate; his critics figure the price tag will be far more.

Never mind that legislators last spring wouldn't go along with this expensive deal. Never mind that last week the plan was rejected again, this time on a 9-2 vote by a bipartisan panel of legislators that reviews how state laws are carried out.

Blagojevich has decided to ignore them all. The vote by the review panel? "Merely advisory," his spokesperson said.

How convenient for him.

Blagojevich is taunting lawmakers: Sue me!

No surprise there, this governor loves government-by-lawsuit. In September, Blagojevich sued the clerk of the Illinois House in September for not recording his vetoes quickly enough.

That was a frivolous waste of time.

But it seems lawmakers are going to have to go to court to protect their power of the purse.

A lawsuit to force the governor to end his dictatorial spending of taxpayers' dollars could take a while to untangle. But the state is already signing people up for the expanded health insurance program. (It would cover adults in a family of four that makes up to about $82,000 a year.)

That rush to create a legally dubious program is troubling, both for patients and for those who take care of them.

Doctor and other health-care providers may have reason to doubt that money to pay bills will materialize, given the state's mounting debts. People who sign up for this coverage also will face a risk. If the governor is found to have overstepped his authority, their eligibility could be revoked, leaving them saddled with medical bills that they thought were covered by insurance. They'd have no one to blame but the governor.

"If he has a question as to either his ability to do this or our ability to prevent him from doing this, leadership skills and decency would dictate that you have this question resolved first, before throwing people's health care or medical providers practices into legal limbo," says state Rep. John Fritchey (D-Chicago), who is a member of the Joint Committee on Administrative Rules.

Springfield is awash in speculation that Blagojevich wants to push as many people as possible into the state program and spend as much as possible, even while its legality is in question. That way, the theory goes, the program becomes so entrenched that the legislature would have no alternative but to find money to keep it going.

That would be reckless, particularly in a state that has more than $100 billion in debts and obligations, much of it for pensions and health-care costs. The state's in a fiscal hole. And the governor is digging faster.